CALGARY — Thousands of older-model tank cars currently hauling crude oil on North American railways must be retrofitted or retired immediately, Canadian Pacific Railway CEO Hunter Harrison said on Tuesday.

In his first major speech in Calgary since taking the helm at CP in 2012, the blunt-talking, sometimes controversial railroader told a Calgary Chamber of Commerce audience he has been speaking to “everybody that will listen” about the dangers of the DOT-111 tanker cars.

Implicated in July’s horrific Lac Megantic train explosion, DOT-111 tanker cars have been shown in several studies to carry a higher risk of rupture in the event of a derailment. Safety officials in the U.S. and Canada have called for immediate action on these cars to make shipping flammable crude by rail safer, but governments on both sides of the border have so far failed to commit to any sort of legislated phase-out or retrofit program.

“Stop them (these cars) tomorrow. Don’t wait for a study, we know the facts,” Harrison said. “You know what it comes down to, and I hate to say this, it’s the almighty dollar. Who’s going to pay for this?”

Though they bear the brunt of public outrage in the event of a spill, for the most part, railways like CP do not own the tank cars they transport — the cars are owned instead by leasing companies and shippers. Experts have said retrofitting the 72,000 older-model cars in service across North America could cost owners anywhere between $30,000 to $70,000 per car.

CP, like its rival Canadian National Railway, announced last week it would implement a surcharge for customers using the older model cars. Harrison applauded Saint John-based Irving Oil, which on Monday announced it will remove older cars from its fleet.

“I think it was a good signal. I think they stood up for what they believed in, and I was proud to see them do it,” Harrison said.

As a carrier, Harrison said, CP Rail is not allowed to say no to shipping oil — it is legally required to transport whatever commodity is brought to it. While Harrison said crude oil can absolutely be shipped by rail safely, he said he would feel better if all shippers would move to tank cars built to 2011 safety standards or better.

It’s not just a crude issue, he added.

“There’s stuff we’re hauling, and it’s going right through your community, right by your door, and it’s a whole lot more dangerous than crude,” Harrison said.

Booming U.S. shale oil production as well as a pipeline bottleneck has led to significant increases in crude by rail shipments in the last two years. According to Statistics Canada, in 2011, about 68,000 carloads of fuel oils and crude petroleum were moving along Canadian rail lines. In 2012, that rose to nearly 113,000. Between January and September of 2013, some 118,000 carloads had already been moved.

The Association of American Railroads estimates 400,000 crude carloads will move in the U.S. in 2013, up from 234,000 in 2012 and just 9,500 in 2008.

But Harrison said CP is not “chasing” the oil shipping business, saying crude accounts for less than five per cent of the railway’s business. He compared the boom in crude by rail to the “Gold Rush,” and said he can’t predict whether the business will expand or taper off.

I don’t get real excited, necessarily, about getting crude. I’m excited about moving lumber and paper and other stuff railways were built on,” Harrison said. “We’ve got to haul the crude, and I’m going to do as good a job as we can do as safely as we can do it, but I’m not out there lobbying to try to get rules changed to make it easier for crude. That’s not my game.”

While some industry groups have suggested it could take 10 years to rid the North American transportation system of the older DOT-111 tank cars, New York-based transportation analyst Anthony Hatch told the Herald he thinks it could be done within two to three years if governments ordered it,

“It would mean some disruption to the supply chain, but not permanent, and hopefully higher safety levels and public reassurance,” Hatch said in an e-mail.

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